Science Fiction Film Research Articles

A Study of the Evolution of Female Roles in Science Fiction Films and Modifying Society’s Stereotypical Thinking

We have hitherto only considered the viewpoint of men, but now it’s time to give women a fair shot as well. Every human being has the potential to learn about and advance science and technology, thus it is not only a field that is exclusively open to one gender. In movies, women play a supporting role for the men. An examination of the ways in which culture affects the evolving discussion of gender portrayals in cinema. Science fiction films are the ideal medium for discussing human habitation in the future because their content is an imaginative representation of civilization. Under the premise of a science fiction theme, it is necessary to re-examine and reinterpret the connection between genders considering modern technology. It has taken a while for the representation of women in movies to improve after years of under representation. Redemption of women altered significantly as nations advanced in modernity. The media had a significant impact on the modernization of societies and the perception of women in the contemporary world. Women are portrayed in modern movies as being more autonomous, self-assured, and career-focused. For example, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Avatar (2009), Mission Mangal (2019). As movies are a mirror of social structural changes, the goal is to connect the evolving roles performed by women in movies with the rising status of women. The hegemonic discourse of cinema that prescribes what constitutes appropriate gender roles. In order to achieve this, we will adopt a critical poststructuralist viewpoint on how body images are portrayed in well-known science fiction Movies that have been released in recent years. How women are portrayed throughout their development history using famous English-speaking science fiction films. The reflection and feedback of the sci-fi film as a social and cultural phenomenon on the reality of the western world. Sci-Fi movies can instruct and influence viewers in a useful way, such as by portraying positive female characters to encourage more women to shatter the stereotype and actively engage in science-related job or studies.

Science Fiction and Film: An Analytical Study of Two Select Indian Movies

Science fiction is a genre of art that caters to the popular taste of the people. It presents a world mixed with science and fictional elements. It can be taken as a microcosm of fictional literature. It uses to present unfamiliar and unknown things in a familiar and known way. It provides its diverse themes and issues not only in texts but also in films. When science fiction is adapted into movies, it is able to attract a large number of audiences specially the young generation of writers. Science fictional films cover the issues like future society, challenges created by scientific developments, human enhancement through science and technology, human-machine clash, hybrid identity, world of aliens, and Artificial Intelligences. There are many films in western countries covering the issue of science fiction. Production houses designed the films in such a way that it can make an appeal to the audience. Even in India, there are several science fiction films. From 1952 to the present, Indian cinema contributes a lot by producing one after another attracting films on the theme of science fiction. The present paper is going to analyze two films Koi...Mill Gaya and its sequel Krish 3 from the perspectives of science fiction. The paper will also try to present the history of science fiction films in India and in the West. It attempts to depict the science fictional elements and new techniques shown in the films. These films are the representations of future society which accepts the inhabitation of different beings like modified human, superhuman and aliens.

Search for Transcendent in Science Fiction and Apocalyptic Films

Humanity gradually shifted away from religion and the sacred in the modern age, but in the postmodern age, people have discovered that science and reason alone cannot satisfy them. As a result, people returned in various ways to mythology, religion, and the mystical. Cinema, one of the most popular arts of the visual age, could not possibly ignore this move. Religious themes and elements are prevalent in films. Humanity has lost confidence in metanarratives thanks to postmodernism, and is shown to be on a different quest for meaning, particularly in science fiction and apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic films. In many films, this quest evolves into a quest for the transcendent. People contemplate the beginning and the end; they speculate about their origins and their future directions. Postmodern viewers are drawn to the holy, mystical, mythological, and transcendental quests offered in movie theaters. As a result, the film business, which is capitalist in nature, uses this tactic to produce stories that are transcendental, sacred, mythological, mystical, magical, supernatural, and, generally speaking, religious. This essay explores the attempt of postmodern man to use cinema to re-enchant the demystified universe. The postmodern man is tired of extreme rationalism and is on a philosophical quest. The study analyzes five science fiction movies, which are also referred to as apocalyptic movies. These are Avatar (2009), Interstellar (2014), Prometheus (2012), War of the Worlds (2005), and I Am Legend (2007). The article argues that in these movies, post-modern man’s quest for meaning is addressed with some sort of transcendence, his modern identity is developed into a postmodern one, or a postmodern identity is brought forth, and his worries about the end are mostly appeased with a postmodern uncertainty.

IMAGES OF FEMALE WARRIORS IN THE FILM WORKS OF MICHELLE YEOHAS AN INDICATOR OF RETHINKING THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN SOCIETY

The article studiesthe work of film actress Michelle Yeoh, in particular, the evolution of the images of female warriors created by her. It is shown that the various stages of the actress' creativity reflect the global processes of reinterpretation of female characters in adventure, fantasy, spy movies, wuxia and kungfu movies. It has been proven that the dramatic talent of Michelle Yeoh is fully revealed in adulthood and complements the images of female warriors with Taoist-Buddhist values.The subject of the article is the images of female warriors in the works of film actress Michelle Yeoh.The research methodology is based on search, system-historical, analytical and comparative methods, which allowed to carry out a comprehensive artistic analysis of Michelle Yeoh's creativity at various stages of her film career.It was concluded that several types of warriors can be distinguished in Michelle Yeoh's work: "a girl with a gun"; master of martial arts; protector - sorceress - mentor; superheroine from science fiction films; a multifaceted dramatic character focused on universal existential questions. It is emphasized that the creative path of M. Yeoh is consistent with the general process of feminization of world cinema, the transfer of emphasis from the patriarchal understanding of the role of women in society to the issue of gender equality and the study of the deep nature of femininity.Key words: Chinese cinema, Michelle Yeoh, wuxia action films, kung fu films, feature film.

STUDENTS’ PREFERENCE FOR USING AUGMENTED REALITY IN TEACHING AND LEARNING A CONCEPT IN COMPUTER STUDY

Augmented reality (AR) has come a long way since it was previously only shown in science fiction films; it is now widely employed in the educational sector as well. The educational industry should not fall behind in the use of augmented reality to improve student teaching and learning. In addition, a few published studies have studied the use of AR in education, but the majority of these studies have not focused on content creation or the long-term impact of augmented reality on the respondents. This research is intended to fill a gap in the existing literature. The initiative is significant to the extent that understanding these areas is a useful indicator of what teachers and other stakeholders can do to improve the situation. The purpose of the study was to (a) determine whether there were any significant gender or academic qualification inequalities among respondents, and (b) determine how AR affected their learning process. A total of 76 students, 36 males and 40 females, participated in the study. Over ninety percent of the students surveyed in the study said that the augmented materials effectively communicated teaching and were beneficial to them. In addition, females (N = 40, mean = 29.35, SD = 3.13) showed a more positive outlook on the application of augmented reality than males. In addition, students with a higher level of education were more enthusiastic about the application of augmented reality.

The Use of Game Elements in Hollywood Science Fiction Films, Taking Ready Player One and Free Guy as Examples

Film and game integration is a new phenomenon in today's multimedia era, and Hollywood science fiction films become a good carrier for the use of game elements with advanced production technology and virtual visual presentation. Based on current research, this paper uses the method of image analysis to explore the use of game rule elements and goal elements in two representative science fiction films, namely, Ready Player One and Free Guy. It looks into the formulaic effect of the rule elements on films world construction and their innovativeness in terms of humanistic worldviews. Furthermore, it considers the set of layered characteristics of the goal elements in the films narrative structures, especially the infinite narrative. Finally, by analyzing the individual cases of the two films and reflecting critically on the presentation of the films, it is concluded that in order to realize the integration of film, game and audience, the wide dissemination of the game spirit, and the subversion and reconstruction of the video world, it is necessary to make trade-offs and innovations. Directly using game elements gives positive inspiration for the creation of future film-game fusion works.

Scoring the Hollywood Actor in the 1950s Gregory Camp

The 1950s were a pivotal decade in the history of Hollywood music. The great movie studios had dominated the early days of sound film production and distribution but were battered in 1948 by the Supreme Court’s antitrust Paramount Case, which forced them to divest from the theatres they had previously controlled and through which they had exerted an effective monopoly on the distribution of their product. As a result of the ruling, studio profits cratered over the next decade, leading to a crisis within the film industry. This crisis was compounded by the traumatic experience of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, which devastated Hollywood in the late 1940s and early 1950s as writers, directors, actors, and composers were forced to testify and inform on one another regarding any political activity deemed to be subversive. But the worst shock to Hollywood’s old order came from the advent of television. As the baby boom generation emerged in the wake of Second World War, TV presented a stay-at-home alternative that caused attendance at cinemas to drop precipitously. To lure viewers back to the cinema, Hollywood rolled out a succession of enticing attractions in the 1950s: spectacular new Widescreen formats such as Cinemascope or Cinerama that provided opportunities for sweeping vistas in historical epics like Ben Hur and thrilling genres such as science fiction and horror, which presented astonishing monsters and flying saucers. At the same time, a relaxing of the strict censorship code that Hollywood, fearing boycotts from the religious right, had imposed on itself since the early 1930s, led to increasingly frank depictions of sex and violence on the screen that reached a culmination with Hitchcock’s boundary-pushing Psycho in 1960. All of this provided new opportunities for musical expression: science fiction and horror films, with their emphasis on the strange and unfamiliar, inspired composers to experiment with modernist techniques such as atonality and electronic music, while movies dealing with contemporary topics such as addiction and teenage crime invited the dangerous and thrilling sounds of jazz and rock’n’roll into the heretofore rather sheltered late-Romantic musical universe of Hollywood film. A new generation of American composers, including Alex North, Leonard Rosenman, Elmer Bernstein, and Henry Mancini, entered the film-scoring scene during this period and proceeded to expand the stylistic palette available to film composers with elements of jazz and modernism. It is not surprising, then, that the 1950s has provided a particularly rich terrain for film-music scholars. An important early contribution to the analysis of pivotal scores by North and Rosenman, among others, was George Burt’s monograph The Art of Film Music (Boston, 1994). In recent years, a number of books, chapters, and articles have explored this turbulent and fascinating decade, including ‘Scoring East of Eden: The Division of the “One”: Leonard Rosenman and the Score for East of Eden’, in Graeme Harper, Ruth Doughty, and Jochen Eisentraut (eds.), Sound and Music in Film and Visual Media: An Overview (New York, 2009); Stanley C. Pelkey II and Anthony Bushard (eds.), Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age (New York, 2015); and James Wierzbicki, Music in the Age of Anxiety: American Music in the Fifties (Chicago and Springfield, IL, 2016).

Gift or Weapon? Reproductive Decision, the Phenomenology of Pregnancy, and Alien Language in Denis Villeneuve's Arrival

Abstract This essay analyzes Denis Villeneuve's 2016 film, Arrival, and elucidates its strikingly original meditation on the ethics of reproduction and the relationships between and among embodied maternal subjectivity, language, and temporality. Drawing on deconstructive theories of language and relationality as well as on the writing of scholars working at the intersection of reproductive biology and feminist philosophy, the essay argues that Arrival uses some of the generic features of science fiction cinema (alien encounter and time travel) to articulate a feminist and posthumanist philosophy of relation and care. Focusing on the film's language of risk, danger, contamination, and even social disintegration, Arrival prompts us to consider how a particularly suggestive account of the maternal-fetal relationship, and of the process of fostering and becoming a relationally determined being, simultaneously engages with the fraught question of reproductive choice and reproductive justice in our contemporary moment. Meditating on the film's visual, sonic, and conceptual representations of the “placental wall” and of the “parasitical” structure of pregnancy, the essay shows how Arrival parallels feminist readings of the materiality of pregnancy that deconstruct the self-possessed or “virile” subject of patriarchal individualism.

Concept of consciousness transfer: creative and scientific research

The article analyzes the use of the consciousness transfer concept in the literature, cinema and science. Both techno-pessimism and techno-optimism are shown to be associated with the consciousness transfer idea. The main reasons for the desire of characters intention to use the consciousness transfer technology, which is also termed as breakdown phenomenon, are demonstrated through the example of the LitRPG subgenre and science fiction films. It is typical for novels and screen novels to demonstrate both positive and negative consequences of the consciousness transfer, but the attitude towards the possibility itself is predominantly positive. Unlike many science fiction theories, which are far from becoming reality, several major scientific projects are already working on the concept of the mind transfer. However, existing projects are far from implementing the consciousness transfer technology and are more often involved in solving particular problems associated with individual brain diseases, or exploring the social and humanitarian consequences of developing the virtual reality generally and the human presence in it particularly. It is concluded that for the modern literature and cinema, the concept of consciousness transfer has turned into a myth about the consciousness transfer, generated by the dream of the human mind omnipotence, combined with a pessimistic idea about the human morality and the human society unity. Furthermore, this myth also reflects a substantial part of the human life being already inside the digital reality.

Experimental science-fiction films as filmic heterotopia

This paper questions the concept of the possible heterotopia of cinema by making a creative reading of a corpus of contemporary experimental science-fiction films. We think heterotopia in direct relation to utopia. If utopia can be linked to a form of thought, then heterotopia would be a form of realised or achievable utopia. Heterotopian action would then allow us to experiment subversive, if not new social configurations, where utopian thought allows us to dream of better (or at least other) societies. We propose to look at these issues starting from experimental science-fiction films. The aesthetic and narrative resorts as well as the modes of production of works like Slow Action and Urth by Ben Rivers, Meteor by Mathias Müller and Christoph Girardet, Momoko Seto’s Planet Series or Jérôme Cognet’s Guerilla Hubble, indeed offer us with an audiovisual experience that invites us to re-evaluate our human relation to the world by appealing to our capacity for imagination and by stimulating our free will, notably through their staging of historicity and multiplicity.

The Analyses on Themes and Images of the Film Never Let Me Go

Contemporary Japanese British writer Ishiguro Ishiguro has been deeply concerned by academia and readers since his creation and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017. Never Let Me Go has been praised for its profound and diverse themes. It was not only nominated for The Man Booker Prize, but also listed by Time Magazine as “one of the 100 greatest English novels since the magazine was founded in 1923”. The film of the same name, Never Let Me Go, which was released in 2010, won the 37th Saturn Awards for “Best Science Fiction Film” nomination. This paper reveals the theme of soul and ethics in the film by analyzing the various images of the film Never Let Me Go. This paper is composed of four parts. The first chapter is an introduction, introducing the research background, literature review, research purpose and significance, and related theories. The second chapter analyzes the object image, space image, character image and their meaning in the film. The third chapter explores the soul theme and ethical theme of the film through the analysis of related imagery and the description of the fate of clones, and at the macro level, it analyzes the reasons for the phenomenon of clones and complaints about this social situation by comparing clones with normal human. The fourth chapter is the conclusion. On the basis of summarizing this paper, it is shown that the use of technology to create human clones to prolong human life is not desirable. Human beings are in a universal community of human destiny and the emergence of clones is contrary to human relations, and human beings should shoulder more responsibility and respect the laws of nature.

SF 영화에서 기억의 재현 혹은 허구의 기억을 포장하는 방식

In science fiction (SF) films where various personalities such as humans, cloned humans, and androids exist, the memory of the characters often plays an important role. Their memories are represented as flashback scenes through cinematic techniques.
 In this study, the methods of representing memories are classified into visual imagery, montage, and dialogue, and corresponding SF films are examined. Then I look into how the representation technique of memory works on the audience.
 In Before We Vanish (2017) and Oblivion (2013), a method of mixing the truth and fiction of memories was used through visual similarity, and in Paycheck (2003) and Miss Yang (2021), the process of finding hidden memories appears by changing the time when the flashback scene is put in. In Total Recall (1990) and Moon (2009), there are scenes in which memories of the past are recalled through the words of others.
 Memories represented in various ways become a criterion for judging selfidentity, progressing an event, or becoming an element of reversal. Ultimately, memories convey the theme the film wants to talk about. Through this study, it is possible to know the expression technique of flashback scenes shown in movies, and to confirm the effect of the completeness of reproduction on the audience's immersion.

Creating a Market for Technology through Film: Diegetic Prototypes in the Iron Man Trilogy

Fiction presents a version of reality that can affect an audience’s perceptions and beliefs. This effect is amplified in audio-visual media, where the medium helps convince the viewer that what they are watching is real. Scientists consulting on films have used this effect to promote their own agendas, including using what David Kirby has called ‘diegetic prototypes’ – fictional instances of not-yet realized technologies. These operate like a regular prototype, demonstrating the technology’s function, uses, and implications. They can build anticipation for, and acceptance of, emerging technologies, and can even attract funding to construct those technologies in real life. There has, however, been little scholarship to determine what makes an effective diegetic prototype. We used the Iron Man trilogy of science-fiction films to investigate this. Through a survey and focus groups we explored which futuristic technologies viewers remembered from the films, and whether they anticipated and encouraged those technologies’ development. We found that film-making concerns such as a depicted technology’s relationship to the plot or main characters, and its capacity for spectacle, were more important in fixing the prototype in the audience’s mind than the nature of the technology itself. We also found audiences anticipated and encouraged the development of technologies they saw as morally good. We recommend people wanting to use diegetic prototypes design them to have both a significant on-screen presence and to be depicted as being generally benevolent, the upsides outweighing the downsides.

A fall from the stars: a critical psychoanalytic reading of James Gray’s film ‘Ad Astra (to the stars)’

ABSTRACT This reading of James Gray’s science fiction film ‘Ad Astra’ explores, largely from a post-Kleinian perspective, phantasised restrictions on object relations that may result in a developmental arrest in late adolescence. The phantasy of omnipotence, with its dominating impact on the mind, is considered, including how this may link with socio-contextual impingements on boys’ developing masculine identities, especially where a father is absent during their late adolescent years.

Performance Predictions of Sci-Fi Films via Machine Learning

The films teenagers watch have a significant influence on their behavior. After witnessing a film starring an actor with a particular social habit or personality trait, viewers, particularly youngsters, may attempt to adopt the actor’s behavior. This study proposes an algorithm-based technique for predicting the market potential of upcoming science fiction films. Numerous science fiction films are released annually, and working in the film industry is both profitable and delightful. Before the film’s release, it is necessary to conduct research and make informed predictions about its success. In this investigation, different machine learning methods written in MATLAB are examined to identify and forecast the future performance of movies. Using 14 methods for machine learning, it was feasible to predict how individuals would vote on science fiction films. Due to their superior performance, the fine, medium, and weighted KNN algorithms were given more consideration. In comparison to earlier studies, the KNN-adopted methods displayed greater precision (0.89–0.93), recall (0.88–0.92), and accuracy (90.1–93.0%), as well as a rapid execution rate, more robust estimations, and a shorter execution time. These tabulated statistics illustrate that the weighted KNN method is effective and trustworthy. If several KNN algorithms targeting specific viewer behavior are logically coupled, the film business and its global expansion can benefit from precise and consistent forecast outcomes. This study illustrates how prospective data analytics could improve the film industry. It is possible to develop a model that predicts a film’s success, effect, and social behavior by assessing features that contribute to its success based on historical data.

Literary AI: Are We Ready for the Future We Imagine?

Book Review| March 17 2023 Literary AI: Are We Ready for the Future We Imagine? Speak. By Louisa Hall. New York: Ecco. 2015. 336 pp. Cloth $23.95; paper $15.42; e-book $12.49.Prey of Gods. By Nicky Drayden. New York: Harper Voyager. 2017. 400 pp. Paper $15.99; e-book $12.99.vN. By Madeline Ashby. Nottingham: Angry Robot. 2012. 416 pp. Paper $12.99; e-book $6.99.iD. By Madeline Ashby. Nottingham: Angry Robot. 2013. 320 pp. Paper $14.99; e-book $6.99.reV. By Madeline Ashby. Nottingham: Angry Robot. 2020. 381 pp. Paper $15.52; e-book $6.99.All Systems Red. By Martha Wells. New York: Tordotcom. 2017. 156 pp. Cloth $11.69; paper $15.99; e-book $4.99.Artificial Condition. By Martha Wells. New York: Tordotcom. 2018. 149 pp. Cloth $14.99; e-book $10.99.Rogue Protocol. By Martha Wells. New York: Tordotcom. 2018. 150 pp. Cloth $11.63; e-book $10.99.Exit Strategy. By Martha Wells. New York: Tordotcom. 2018. 163 pp. Cloth $11.6; e-book $10.99.Network Effect. By Martha Wells. New York: Tordotcom. 2020. 348 pp. Cloth $15.29; paper $13.99; e-book $11.99.Fugitive Telemetry. By Martha Wells. New York: Tordotcom. 2021. 172 pp. Cloth $16.39; e-book $15.99.Machines like Me. By Ian McEwan. New York: Nan A. Talese. 2019. 352 pp. Cloth $15.56; paper $9.89; e-book $11.99.Frankissstein: A Love Story. By Jeannette Winterson. New York: Grove Press. 2019. 352 pp. Cloth $6.20; paper $15.10; e-book $12.99.Analog/Virtual: And Other Simulations of Our Future. By Lavanya Lakshiminarayan. Delhi: Hachette India. 2020. 312 pp. Paper $12.45.Burn-In. By P. W. Singer and August Cole. New York: Mariner Books. 2020. 432 pp. Cloth $12.69; paper $10.67; e-book $10.49.Machinehood. By S. B. Divya. New York: Saga Press. 2021. 416 pp. Cloth $23.99; paper $16.69; e-book $13.99.A Psalm for the Wild-Built. By Becky Chambers. New York: Tordotcom. 2021. 160 pp. Cloth $18.89; e-book $10.99.Klara and the Sun. By Kazuo Ishiguro. New York: Knopf, 2021. 320 pp. Cloth $13.89; paper $15.26; e-book $12.99. Sherryl Vint Sherryl Vint Sherryl Vint is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and Chair of the Department of English at the University of California, Riverside, where she directs the Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science program. She was a founding editor of Science Fiction Film and Television and is an editor for the journal Science Fiction Studies and the book series Science in Popular Culture. She has published widely on science fiction, including, most recently, Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction (2021) and Programming the Future: Speculative Television and the End of Democracy (2022, co-authored with Jonathan Alexander). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature 10575176. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575176 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Sherryl Vint; Literary AI: Are We Ready for the Future We Imagine?. American Literature 2023; 10575176. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575176 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2023 by Duke University Press2023 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

ARCHITECTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE DUNE MOVIES

When the works of science fiction cinema from the past to the present are examined, space designs that are often designed inspired by architectural movements and designed in accordance with the targeted time period of production are seen. If it is not possible to produce all or some part of these space designs technologically in today's conditions, it is defined as fictional space design. In line with the technological developments and innovations experienced since the first emergence of cinema, fictional space designs continue the process of evolution. It can be seen that one of the biggest factors that has accelerated the evolutionary processes of science fiction and fictional space since the first examples is its interaction with art movements. When science fiction is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is the future, advances in technology, a future society developed from existing paradigms. Sci-Fi is usually depicted in a way that makes a statement about current issues related to the future, society, the environment, politics, economics and religion, or questions them with the problems posed by the progress of science in various fields. The art and architectural movement inspired by a cinema work can be seen in all product and space designs within the scope of the film. By showing diversity most of the time, it incorporates style and design approaches from different architectural movements and offers an eclectic aesthetic integrity to the audience. For example, in the works of science fiction cinema, within the fiction of the same planet, living in the same time zone or different from each other, which belong to the same race or species, socio-cultural and Economic, the political administration of the societies differ from each other according to geographical and spatial designs-a lot of and it can be seen in production. One of the most important examples is the Dune productions. In this research, architectural analyses of Dune films in terms of fictional space will be performed.

AI and us – the Representation of Artificial Intelligence in Science Fiction Movies

AI is one of the defining and divisive issues of our present time. This paper aims to explore, through the plot and premise of thirteen science fiction films, the visual and content representations of the relationships between various forms of artificial intelligence and humans. Based on a qualitative text analysis, the study can be a useful contribution to understanding the subjective perceptions associated with this issue, since the narratives and assumptions of films, as pervasive popular cultural products, have a major impact on the climate of social opinion, the mood of the mass audiences and the preferred solutions. The description also outlines the broader context in which the films were made, focusing on the relationship between man and AI and its symbolic elements.

Representing the Unrepresentable

This article discusses the representations of alienhood in a selection of first contact science-fiction films. It performs a cinematographic reading of human encounters with and attitudes towards alienhood. By examining the visual stylistic choices, the representation of outer-space (other)worlds and alienhood will be problematized beyond the binarism of vilification and celebration. Instead, contact with alienhood will offer deeper insight into the cultural, intellectual and psychological facets of human identity and urge further introspection about the human position in a universe that no longer obeys an anthropocentric logic. Ultimately, first contact science-fiction cinema will be shown to relativize the reassuring conception of selfhood and to suggest the obsolescence of universalist-humanist assumptions about alienhood. This is achieved by opting for a representational one-way route which leads towards acceptance, not of the alien per se, but of the potential and limits of the human self when faced with the unknowability and the unrepresentability of alienhood.

Diane M. Nelson (1963–2022)

Diane M. Nelson (1963–2022)